[Wikimedia-l] Why not everyone have the right to vote in the Board & FDC elections?

[Michael Peel]

On 30 Apr 2013, at 14:30, Thehelpfulone <thehelpfulonewiki at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 29 April 2013 21:01, Ziko van Dijk <vandijk at wmnederland.nl> wrote:
>  
> With 2 seats selected by the chapters and in future maybe the thorgs, and 3
> by the editing community, and 1 by the staff, more than half of the board
> members would be not directly coopted.
> Many other varieties are possible, of course. The staff could together vote
> one elector who would take part in the selection by the chapters, the same
> for the Wikimedia User Groups. But then, this voting group should select
> ultimately not 2 but 3 seats.
> People who don't edit but belong to the movement can have their influence
> via the chapters and in future the thorgs.
>  
> On 30 April 2013 11:54, Michael Peel <michael.peel at wikimedia.org.uk> wrote:
>  
> I'd like to +1 on this, as that only seems fair to me - either we have an inclusive solution for all Wikimedia organisation staff, or we don't involve staff in the elections at all (unless they are also active community members). Moving this discussion on-wiki would definitely be good, to reduce the chances of this discussion being forgotten about next time around...
>  
> BTW, It might also be worth thinking about spreading the community elected seats over multiple years - at the moment, all three are appointed at once, which means that there's not necessarily any sort of continuity in the community's perspective on the board. Having two elected one year, and one the next year, might be a better solution to maintain continuity here.
>  
> An alternative proposal, as suggested by Risker and James above is that even if you don't necessarily edit substantially, you can still be part of the movement, so lowering edit requirements to allow all staff and board members of the WMF, Chapters and other thematic organisations (and everyone else that's part of the movement) to elect all 5 of the "community" seats (3 community + 2 chapters) would bring everyone in the movement closer together.
>  
> This would arguably be the most fair option, can someone summarise the justification for chapters to be able to exclusively select 2 of out 5 community seats through a much less-transparent process?

I'm not sure how low the edit requirements would have to be in order to allow all staff + board members to vote - has anyone looked at the statistics of edit counts of staff + board members to quantify this? It would also need to be balanced against the increased risk of election fraud (it's easier to create more new accounts with a smaller number of edits without being spotted).

My understanding of the chapter-selected seats is that those were intended to bring in people from the chapters' sphere of contacts who were unlikely to want to stand through very public elections, hence the reduced transparency involved in their appointments. So I'd personally view them as a sort of cross-over between expert and community seats, rather than simply as community seats (e.g. they wouldn't necessarily be filled by a Wikimedian).

Thanks,
Mike
(personal viewpoint)